


Safeguard

by EstelleDusk



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Genre: And Stone is a Trained Killer, Badniks are People too, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Off-screen death, Sad Agent Stone (Sonic the Hedgehog 2020), Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, i use nature names and they them pronouns for all agents, its very light more of an acceptance of fate, this is just real sad guys and im not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24520507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EstelleDusk/pseuds/EstelleDusk
Summary: Sitting ontheirhis bed, surrounded by curious badniks, chirping a familiar tune Stone has long since memorized the meaning of.Where’s Daddy?He didn’t answer, he only pressed his face deeper into his hands.
Relationships: Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone
Comments: 8
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Post-movie, whether or not Robotnik is actually dead or just believed dead by everyone around them is up to the reader

Robotnik did not exist.

There was never such a man in the government’s employ, and any that believed otherwise were more than welcome to follow a secretary to the archives in the basement.

Ivo Kintober however, was dead, leaving behind a widow told to never speak his name again. Stone had all of the technology his husband left behind. Blueprints, prototypes, copyrights, even finished products.

Sitting on ~~their~~ his bed, surrounded by curious badniks, chirping a familiar tune Stone has long since memorized the meaning of.

_ Where’s Daddy? _

He didn’t answer, he only pressed his face deeper into his hands.

It took weeks before he stopped the badniks from shooting at any visitors.

Months before he could bring himself to leave that house, get back to some kind of work.

With the smile on his face, his coworkers believed he had healed, had forgotten all about that ambitious man that had once been the center of Stone’s life.

Then some green agent read the room wrong on the anniversary of Ivo’s death, it wasn’t their fault, they hadn’t known what all the other agents had known. It didn’t matter what anyone thought of the doctor, as long as insults were never said about him within earshot of Stone.

They thought Stone would want to celebrate a year of being _free_ from the influence of such a terrifying man.

Now they didn’t think.

The badnik Stone had taken to work with him had opened fire without hesitation, almost purring as it then pressed close to Stone’s raised hand. The other agents were a mixed set, some pointing standard-issue guns at the pair, others backing away with raised hands and nervous steps.

Stone didn’t even look at them, he looked at the badnik in his hands and realized his options for his trigger finger actions.

Let B-2406 fire on the rest of the agents. Die in the crossfire.

Turn B-2406 over to his supervisors, claim the shot was a misfire, a result of old coding of Ivo’s and not because of the subtle motion he had made with his gloved hand. See the innocent badnik destroyed and the others investigated.

Run. Become enemy #1, Ivo would be so proud if he were around.

Or…

His fingers pet the badnik, before calmly pressing down in a specific spot. The badnik was confused as it whirred down, going offline, a red light slowly flashing. Stone made a quick excuse and left, an easy lie about activating the robot’s self-destruct leaving his lips.

While there was a self-destruct in all of Ivo’s tech, that wasn’t the button for it. He just needed some distance to do what he planned.

It had been a  _ year, _ and still, Stone had clung to the past, clung to a dead man’s memory and toys. It would hurt him, but perhaps it was time? His mother had always said it was better to rip the bandage off, get it over with quick and forget all about it.

Ivo would have already forgotten him if their positions were reversed, wouldn’t he? For all that Stone cared for his Doctor, Ivo had always shown more care to his badniks than to his husband.

His babies, he called them.

Stone stumbled, tightening his hold on B-2406. The mobile lab was right in front of him, parked right where he left it this morning. Was he really going to do this? Ivo would hate him until the end of time for even thinking it, wouldn’t he? This was his legacy.

He placed his hand on the wall, allowed the scanner to slowly decide to let him in. The stairs came down and Stone entered the truck, trailing his fingers along the vehicle. The lights turned on, section by section, staying bright white.

Adjusting his grip one last time, he went for the badnik charging stations first. Carefully, as though the robot was lighter and more delicate than he knew it was, he put B-2406 to bed, stroking it one final time.

He ran his fingers over the rest of them, pressing gently in the same spot that turned B-2406 off instead of merely asleep. It was the one peace he could afford Ivo’s babies. They would still be connected to the lab’s main computers, still able to be overridden with a master code. But they would see nothing from this point on.

Their digital lives until that secret button was pressed again, was empty and meaningless. Stone hasn’t related so much to badniks in a year. Both their own and Stone’s lives had revolved around the brilliance of Ivo. But...

Ivo wasn’t here, he was dead.

And the man Ivo had trusted to keep all of his technology safe, to flip the switch in the improbable case of his death, hadn’t done what he swore he would do. For a whole year.

A year in which anyone could have overpowered Stone and stolen the lifework of Doctor Robotnik.

A year in which Agent Stone had failed his final duty to the Doctor, out of _sentimentality_.

He sighed and got to work. There was only a limited time until his coworkers cleaned up his earlier mess and came after him. He went around the lab, manually shutting down everything with an optical lens or audio recorder or both. Which was... everything.

Ivo had found it helpful, his technology could recognize his very pointed appearance and voice. A carefully cultured image, burned into the nano-brains of every piece of Robotnik Tech. Now, however, it gave Stone more work to do.

He was a child of the 80s, he grew up with adults drilling it into his head to always turn off a computer completely before unplugging it. It was a hard habit to break, even in a time when most computers were rarely turned off and didn’t always have wires to pull.

He made his way to the power breaks and popped open the panel. With his fingers hovering over the power for the badniks, he closed his eyes. The charging docks would stop working. Reserve battery in the badniks would last until the heat death of the universe as Ivo always claimed. He could theoretically leave it at this.

Everything off, waiting for the impossible feat of a dead man coming home.

It didn’t seem right.

All or nothing, Ivo had once said. Go all in, or don’t bother playing the game.

Stone started to flip the switches, listening for the subtle hum of power to tell him when a section was turned off. He’s never known the lab to be so quiet. With nearly all the power breakers flipped off, Stone reached for the last switches. His gloved thumbs ran lightly over the self-destruct…

He took another turn around the lab, murmuring goodbyes to robots that couldn’t speak back.

There was a knock on the door to the lab just as Stone manually override the mechanism for the stairs to go down so he could leave. A circle of rifles greeted him, as well as one pistol in the hands of the agent that knocked. Stone let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had held, then smiled at the agents.

He rubbed his bare palms, disguising the gesture as sleeve adjustment. A year of wearing those gloves left them feeling strange now. He didn’t have any of Ivo’s tech on him, leaving even his specialized gun inside the truck. 

“It’s all yours, boys. Evergreen, mind if I borrow your car? I seem to be down a ride now. You’ll find I’ve decommissioned and powered down everything.”

Seconds ticked down before the pistol-wielding agent lowered their gun and pulled out a set of keys that were tossed to Stone. He fumbled with the catch, looked around, then pressed the unlock button twice. With another smile at the not-so-distant beep, Stone subtly checked to make sure the Robotnik engraving wasn’t on the hard plastic.

Only then did he start walking away as the agents and soldiers organized to enter the mobile lab. Evergreen took a moment, grabbing Stone’s shoulder and giving him a hard look. “Hey, don’t leave town.”

Another smile.

Another nod.

Stone power walked to the car, his internal countdown never stopping. He quickly ensured there was no Robotnik Tech in the vehicle, and that the car itself hadn’t been worked on by the Doctor. Ivo had always liked to mark things he considered his, even if they were used by someone else.

He kept an eye on the mobile lab in the rearview mirror as he drove away, foot heavy on the gas. As his eyes returned to the road in front of him, he caught a glint of gold and his heart stopped.

The wedding band.

Specially made by Ivo, for Stone.

Engineered to register his heart rate and vital signs, alerting his husband if they ever fell into life-threatening levels.

And like all Robotnik Tech, engineered to self-destruct soon after receiving the signal from the mobile lab’s own self-destruction. As soon as that machine-to-machine communication was interrupted, everything would blow.

Stone stopped the car and shakily pulled off the ring before staring at it.

In a few moments, Stone will have succeeded in  _ killing _ Ivo more fully than that hedgehog had. Every little machine those disastrous fingers had cobbled together will be wiped from the Earth. His babies will be gone. His kingdom of machine and genius will be nothing more than a memory.

But not in Stone’s memory. Because he’ll be just as dead as the rest of Ivo’s things.

He has time, of course, he can just chuck the ring behind him and drive off.

Is Ivo waiting for him? In whatever afterlife there is? Yelling at whatever passed for a god?

Stone stopped counting.

He slipped the ring back on, held it close to his chest, and curled up in the driver’s seat. When he heard the first of the explosions, the initial screams from the agents that would be watching the mobile lab go up in flames with their comrades inside, he slowly let out a breath.

When the next round started, he waited for the heat to envelop him.

And there was nothing.

Nothing but a man sobbing loudly in a car that wasn’t his, as he realized his husband, in the event of his death, would rather Stone live on.


	2. Director's Commentary Version

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I joked, but people seemed honestly interested in a sort of director's commentary cut. While "Your Inner Voice..." won the poll about it, that fic is not confirmed finished yet and I would prefer to write my notes about a _finished_ work

_Robotnik did not exist._

_There was never such a man in the government’s employ, and any that believed otherwise were more than welcome to follow a secretary to the archives in the basement._

> Director's Commentary (DC): This is a Cask of Amontillado joke. Follow the secretary down to the basement if you must insist Robotnik exists, and get disappeared

_Ivo Kintober however, was dead, leaving behind a widow told to never speak his name again. Stone had all of the technology his husband left behind. Blueprints, prototypes, copyrights, even finished products._

_Sitting on ~~their~~ his bed, surrounded by curious badniks, chirping a familiar tune Stone has long since memorized the meaning of._

_Where’s Daddy?_

_He didn’t answer, he only pressed his face deeper into his hands._

> DC: Each badnik was trained to not only respond to certain tune excerpts, such as Ride of the Valkyries, but also to beep in those sequences to ask questions. A different song for every pre-approved question. Because they never expected to need to use this specific tune "Where's Daddy" in a dire emergency, Robotnik had decided it would be hilarious if he made that phrase a wolf whistle, so he did
> 
> DC: As for why Stone was able to walk away with all that technology? He wasn't. Both he and Robotnik lived in the same government townhouse, heavily supervised from the outside and from the entrance inside. More than once, Robotnik has arrived home, and said "Honey I'm home!" while looking directly into the single indoor camera he allowed the government to have. It would be known immediately if Stone ever tried to run away with the technology

_It took weeks before he stopped the badniks from shooting at any visitors._

_Months before he could bring himself to leave that house, get back to some kind of work._

_With the smile on his face, his coworkers believed he had healed, had forgotten all about that ambitious man that had once been the center of Stone’s life._

_Then some green agent read the room wrong on the anniversary of Ivo’s death, it wasn’t their fault, they hadn’t known what all the other agents had known. It didn’t matter what anyone thought of the doctor, as long as insults were never said about him within earshot of Stone._

_They thought Stone would want to celebrate a year of being free from the influence of such a terrifying man._

_Now they didn’t think._

_The badnik Stone had taken to work with him had opened fire without hesitation, almost purring as it then pressed close to Stone’s raised hand. The other agents were a mixed set, some pointing standard-issue guns at the pair, others backing away with raised hands and nervous steps._

_Stone didn’t even look at them, he looked at the badnik in his hands and realized his options for his trigger finger actions._

_Let B-2406 fire on the rest of the agents. Die in the crossfire._

> DC: Yeah so... B-2406 stands for Badnik 24/06, 6/24/year, the 24th of June, which was both their anniversary, and in this particular story, the day Robotnik disappeared

_Turn B-2406 over to his supervisors, claim the shot was a misfire, a result of old coding of Ivo’s and not because of the subtle motion he had made with his gloved hand. See the innocent badnik destroyed and the others investigated._

_Run. Become enemy #1, Ivo would be so proud if he were around._

_Or…_

_His fingers pet the badnik, before calmly pressing down in a specific spot. The badnik was confused as it whirred down, going offline, a red light slowly flashing. Stone made a quick excuse and left, an easy lie about activating the robot’s self-destruct leaving his lips._

_While there was a self-destruct in all of Ivo’s tech, that wasn’t the button for it. He just needed some distance to do what he planned._

> DC: this right here? Was literally me saying "hey fellas i'm have everything blow up and Stone run away" and I'm curious how many people got that 

_It had been a year, and still, Stone had clung to the past, clung to a dead man’s memory and toys. It would hurt him, but perhaps it was time? His mother had always said it was better to rip the bandage off, get it over with quick and forget all about it._

_Ivo would have already forgotten him if their positions were reversed, wouldn’t he? For all that Stone cared for his Doctor, Ivo had always shown more care to his badniks than to his husband._

_His babies, he called them._

> DC: I just want to point out that these are Stone's thoughts. He believed that despite being married, his husband still cared more about his creations. He was wrong, but he hadn't known that because he had never asked. He didn't want confirmation just in case his belief was right

_Stone stumbled, tightening his hold on B-2406. The mobile lab was right in front of him, parked right where he left it this morning. Was he really going to do this? Ivo would hate him until the end of time for even thinking it, wouldn’t he? This was his legacy._

_He placed his hand on the wall, allowed the scanner to slowly decide to let him in. The stairs came down and Stone entered the truck, trailing his fingers along the vehicle. The lights turned on, section by section, staying bright white._

_Adjusting his grip one last time, he went for the badnik charging stations first. Carefully, as though the robot was lighter and more delicate than he knew it was, he put B-2406 to bed, stroking it one final time._

_He ran his fingers over the rest of them, pressing gently in the same spot that turned B-2406 off instead of merely asleep. It was the one peace he could afford Ivo’s babies. They would still be connected to the lab’s main computers, still able to be overridden with a master code. But they would see nothing from this point on._

_Their digital lives until that secret button was pressed again, was empty and meaningless. Stone hasn’t related so much to badniks in a year. Both their own and Stone’s lives had revolved around the brilliance of Ivo. But..._

_Ivo wasn’t here, he was dead._

_And the man Ivo had trusted to keep all of his technology safe, to flip the switch in the improbable case of his death, hadn’t done what he swore he would do. For a whole year._

_A year in which anyone could have overpowered Stone and stolen the lifework of Doctor Robotnik._

_A year in which Agent Stone had failed his final duty to the Doctor, out of sentimentality._

> DC: it was written into their marriage contract and Stone never thought it would happen

_He sighed and got to work. There was only a limited time until his coworkers cleaned up his earlier mess and came after him. He went around the lab, manually shutting down everything with an optical lens or audio recorder or both. Which was... everything._

_Ivo had found it helpful, his technology could recognize his very pointed appearance and voice. A carefully cultured image, burned into the nano-brains of every piece of Robotnik Tech. Now, however, it gave Stone more work to do._

_He was a child of the 80s, he grew up with adults drilling it into his head to always turn off a computer completely before unplugging it. It was a hard habit to break, even in a time when most computers were rarely turned off and didn’t always have wires to pull._

_He made his way to the power breaks and popped open the panel. With his fingers hovering over the power for the badniks, he closed his eyes. The charging docks would stop working. Reserve battery in the badniks would last until the heat death of the universe as Ivo always claimed. He could theoretically leave it at this._

_Everything off, waiting for the impossible feat of a dead man coming home._

_It didn’t seem right._

_All or nothing, Ivo had once said. Go all in, or don’t bother playing the game._

_Stone started to flip the switches, listening for the subtle hum of power to tell him when a section was turned off. He’s never known the lab to be so quiet. With nearly all the power breakers flipped off, Stone reached for the last switches. His gloved thumbs ran lightly over the self-destruct…_

_He took another turn around the lab, murmuring goodbyes to robots that couldn’t speak back._

_There was a knock on the door to the lab just as Stone manually override the mechanism for the stairs to go down so he could leave. A circle of rifles greeted him, as well as one pistol in the hands of the agent that knocked. Stone let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had held, then smiled at the agents._

_He rubbed his bare palms, disguising the gesture as sleeve adjustment. A year of wearing those gloves left them feeling strange now. He didn’t have any of Ivo’s tech on him, leaving even his specialized gun inside the truck._

_“It’s all yours, boys. Evergreen, mind if I borrow your car? I seem to be down a ride now. You’ll find I’ve decommissioned and powered down everything.”_

_Seconds ticked down before the pistol-wielding agent lowered their gun and pulled out a set of keys that were tossed to Stone. He fumbled with the catch, looked around, then pressed the unlock button twice. With another smile at the not-so-distant beep, Stone subtly checked to make sure the Robotnik engraving wasn’t on the hard plastic._

_Only then did he start walking away as the agents and soldiers organized to enter the mobile lab. Evergreen took a moment, grabbing Stone’s shoulder and giving him a hard look. “Hey, don’t leave town.”_

_Another smile._

_Another nod._

_Stone power walked to the car, his internal countdown never stopping. He quickly ensured there was no Robotnik Tech in the vehicle, and that the car itself hadn’t been worked on by the Doctor. Ivo had always liked to mark things he considered his, even if they were used by someone else._

> DC: here we have our first look at Agent Evergreen, you'll see more of him soon, he even got some new pronouns since his introduction! And a backstory!
> 
> DC: and yeah, Bot likes to mark things as his, he does that in everything I've written, he'll even mark people, normally with stylized R shaped pendants

_He kept an eye on the mobile lab in the rearview mirror as he drove away, foot heavy on the gas. As his eyes returned to the road in front of him, he caught a glint of gold and his heart stopped._

_The wedding band._

_Specially made by Ivo, for Stone._

_Engineered to register his heart rate and vital signs, alerting his husband if they ever fell into life-threatening levels._

_And like all Robotnik Tech, engineered to self-destruct soon after receiving the signal from the mobile lab’s own self-destruction. As soon as that machine-to-machine communication was interrupted, everything would blow._

> DC: I do want to clarify something here about the wedding band. It was never meant to blow up. Ivo thought long and hard about whether or not to include a self-destruct in that too, before deciding that he couldn't take that choice from Stone, the choice of life. But he never bothered to correct Stone when he received the ring and joked "and let me guess, it will blow up when we die just like everything else."
> 
> DC: Robotnik argued with his selfishness for ages, and when he finally decided, he really hoped that in the event of his death, Stone would find someone else.

_Stone stopped the car and shakily pulled off the ring before staring at it._

_In a few moments, Stone will have succeeded in killing Ivo more fully than that hedgehog had. Every little machine those disastrous fingers had cobbled together will be wiped from the Earth. His babies will be gone. His kingdom of machine and genius will be nothing more than a memory._

_But not in Stone’s memory. Because he’ll be just as dead as the rest of Ivo’s things._

_He has time, of course, he can just chuck the ring behind him and drive off._

_Is Ivo waiting for him? In whatever afterlife there is? Yelling at whatever passed for a god?_

_Stone stopped counting._

_He slipped the ring back on, held it close to his chest, and curled up in the driver’s seat. When he heard the first of the explosions, the initial screams from the agents that would be watching the mobile lab go up in flames with their comrades inside, he slowly let out a breath._

_When the next round started, he waited for the heat to envelop him._

> DC: [I like the way you smile at me. / I felt the heat that enveloped me. / And what saw I liked to see. / I never knew where evil grew.] Where Evil Grows, by the Poppy Family
> 
> DC: Yeah I blatantly attempted to make yall be reminded of the song Ivo danced to

_And there was nothing._

_Nothing but a man sobbing loudly in a car that wasn’t his, as he realized his husband, in the event of his death, would rather Stone live on._

**Author's Note:**

> ♥


End file.
